E.P. Brandon
Can there be an introduction to X without an X to introduce? At first blush one might think not, but one should be forgiven for supposing that the philosophy of education proves one wrong. Here we have yet another Introduction to Philosophy of Education that introduces us to the introductions; when shall we ever find the real thing? It is true that there are a few genuine works in the genre, and we even have a volume in the Oxford Readings in Philosophy, but for all that the philosophy of education must have one of the highest ratios of introductions to real works of any area of human endeavour.
Akinpelu's excuse for further distending the relationship is that students in Nigeria have a hard time gathering together and making sense of the existing introductions, which are all geared to "first world" conditions and students, and which have in general dispensed with the obvious prescriptions of earlier generations. They are also hampered by the variety of topics that Nigerian examiners expect to be covered in a philosophy of education course. I am unable to judge how far Professor Akinpelu has succeeded in covering the standard Nigerian syllabus, though he certainly mentions a good number of different topics, and for no other reason that I can see; but in other respects his is an undistinguished contribution which appears to have missed most of the opportunities a genuinely non-Western focus would offer, and which contains too many inaccuracies and too much sloppiness for one to be happy recommending it to any students anywhere.1 His claim to refocus the subject does, however, raise more compellingly the question of what contribution philosophy should make to the preparation of a teacher, and I shall attempt to address this question in the sequel.
But first to describe Akinpelu's own solution. After a short chapter on philosophy and how it might relate to education, he gives us two long chapters on "Educational Thinkers" (Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, Quintilian, Comenius, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Herbart, in chapter 2; Whitehead, James Africanus Beale Horton, Bishop James Johnson, E.W. Blyden, Henry Carr, and Nyerere, in chapter 3). He then treats "Schools of Philosophy of Education" — idealism, something he calls "realism", pragmatism (i.e. Dewey), and existentialism — before offering two chapters of philosophical analysis, one on a few of the standard concepts (education, teaching, and learning) and the other on three current issues in Nigerian education that hinge on equality of opportunity, "quality" education, and the integration of the educational system.
With my anachronistic commitment to the classics, I should perhaps be pleased at the thought of Nigerian student-teachers engaging with Isocrates or pondering part of Bishop Berkeley's slogan about existence in Latin, but I fear that most of these chapters will seem to them "little bits of knowledge from which nothing follows", as Akinpelu remarks (p. 148) echoing Whitehead. Again Akinpelu's repeated invitation to take other concepts and issues and "do philosophy" on them may fall on deaf ears since he really gives no indication of how to go about philosophical analysis or how to know when you have succeeded. As I indicate in some of the footnotes, his own practice is none too inspiring.
That Akinpelu is addressing a Nigerian audience is obvious from occasional references (such as the tasteless one to a public execution on the Lagos bar-beach p. 147) and from the specific contents of chapters 3 and 6. Besides Whitehead and the Tanzanian President Nyerere, chapter 3 details the life and thought of several influential West African educationalists; and chapter 6 offers unsatisfying discussions of issues that are said to feature in current Nigerian debate, though the chapter does little to specify the local context — perhaps Akinpelu can afford to rely here on his readers' background knowledge. He also mentions the existence of Muslim schools and the hostility of non-Christians to the Christian monopoly on "modern" Schooling in British West Africa; but in a nation that is still predominantly non-Christian Akinpelu's complete failure to discuss the questions that arise from confronting Muslim pedagogy or from accepting religious toleration must seem somewhat negligent, to say the least. He tells us that "in the area of knowledge, Henry Carr would appear to be completely taken in with the orientation of the Western education of which he was a beneficiary" (p. 104), and later he criticizes Peters' notorious account of the educated man as too narrowly cognitive, élitist, and Western oriented (pp. 181-3), but again his failure to discuss or justify any alternative conceptions of knowledge or education effectively belies the touted "third world" concern.
West African students may feel more at home with odd references to plantain or the ancestral spirits, but apart from the largely non-philosophical surveys of Blyden, Carr, and company the Africanism is really only cosmetic and stylistic; Akinpelu has not addressed the serious philosophical problems that arise when one contemplates schooling in an African environment. Part of the difficulty is the sociological naivety that it is probably one of philosophy of education's ideological roles to foster; but even the most sociologically naive philosopher must recognize a problem in the clash between the world views of contemporary Western schooling and those of most, if not all, traditional African societies. I have met students who are both Christians, members of the Porro society, and tune into assorted stations on their transistor radios; but a philosopher might well wonder whether one should subscribe to all the beliefs involved here simultaneously. There is, of course, a large and poignant literature on the problems individuals have faced trying to cope with these issues. But Akinpelu seems to see no problem; or perhaps he is allowing the syllabus to override them, and thus willy-nilly going along with the cultural imperialism that still seems the main business of Nigerian education.
But this may be too charitable a suggestion. Even when his own discussion raises relevant issues Akinpelu fails to exploit them. Thus in discussing Henry Carr, Akinpelu talks of "what we will now describe as an erroneous belief, namely, that schools should train people outside of the environment in which they are going to live" (p. 107). This piece of unprogressive cant occurs in the discussion of a man whom Akinpelu himself quotes extensively on the almost limitless society to which one has the key in literacy. What is the "environment in which they are going to live"? Carr recognized, as Akinpelu seems not to, that schooling can make a big difference here. A person's acquaintance may include Jesus, Socrates, Marx, Shakespeare ... or it may not; in the context of educational debate, there is no prior environment to which we should appeal to decide for us what shall happen; we make the environment. We have problems, not least because some parts of an environment do not sit happily with other parts, but we should not shut our eyes to them in this way.
All the same, it would seem that Akinpelu has let the syllabus dictate the topics and approaches he deals with. This is understandable in a textbook writer, but, as I suggested in opening, in this area it is also unfortunate since the question of philosophy's role, if any, in the preparation of teachers needs reconsideration, and if Akinpelu is a reliable guide, one would also think the Nigerian syllabus needs urgent attention too. I have elsewhere2 sketched the social background to this question of philosophy's role in education, and will now assume, along with Akinpelu, that any role for philosophy will be connected with philosophy as an academic discipline and not merely with pious platitudes or uncontrolled inspirations.
If we start by supposing that it is philosophy of education that is in question, we have an immediate problem — that in general the philosophy of X is better done by philosophers than by practitioners or theorists of X. Thus in recent philosophy of religion we have the Mackie-Flew restatement of the problem of evil, Plantinga's sophisticated attempts to extricate theism from it, Swinburne's careful and intelligible defence of religious beliefs, etc., etc.; but what have the theologians to show? Bertrand Russell contributed much to logic and the foundations of mathematics, but he left his name to a paradox, not a theorem. Aesthetics has recently become an exciting subject, thanks to Wollheim, Goodman, Scruton, among others, but none of these are even critics, let alone artists or writers (though admittedly Wollheim has published a novel). Further examples could be given but the problem for us is that philosophy of education is taught by, and written by, people who are usually not first and foremost philosophers. So, if the generalization is correct, what hope can we entertain for the worth of most philosophy of education? And if that is very little, why force such mediocrity upon the academically somewhat disadvantaged students we deal with?
If we broaden our horizons to embrace the whole of philosophy, we still have problems selecting what to offer prospective teachers. From its reckless distribution to all levels of education students one might suppose that philosophy of education is more accessible than other branches of philosophy, but our first problem is that philosophy, always and in all branches, requires an attention to what others may think mere niceties, to distinctions not usually made or kept to elsewhere, and to soundness of argument, that makes it, if not impossible, certainly uncongenial to the mass of mankind.
A second problem is that philosophy3 is a subject with results to its credit. Akinpelu does it a disservice by suggesting that it is a ragbag of passing fashions, the best bits of which are somehow to be integrated into a person's approach to teaching. The reason for this is, I suspect, that the kind of progress I am referring to rests heavily on logical insights — we now know more than Plato about how the concept "large" works, though we have yet to find the full story; we now know a lot more about numbers thanks to Frege; we have a keener sense of the structure of knowledge than Hirst or Phenix display — and Akinpelu is distinctly weak when it comes to logic.4 The main point, however, is that if a student is to appreciate these advances on earlier philosophy, or more pertinently, on present-day common-sense, he or she needs a good deal of fairly abstruse training, of a kind that appears totally unrelated to a teacher's practical concerns.
A third problem is that if we acknowledge the genuine philosophical problems that arise for teachers in the other subjects they teach or learn, we still cannot just hope to satisfy them by providing a course in the philosophy of history or the philosophy of science or whatever it may be. As I have suggested above, philosophy of X is best done by philosophers, and this may be taken to indicate that the philosophy of X is not usually of much use in advancing the subject, X. The questions it deals with are philosophically motivated questions, and these may have little or no interest for practitioners of X. Philosophers of history discuss the objectivity of historical knowledge, and this certainly has a bearing on the practice of historians and teachers of history; but philosophers of history also discuss something called the "covering-law" model of historical explanation, where the topic is not what historians think they are doing but what they are implicitly relying on in advancing their explanations. The question has considerable importance if you are concerned with the varieties of knowledge or modes of explanation, or with the possible distinctiveness of the human sciences, or with the nature of causation; but it need have no bearing on how you do history or teach it (though of course it might affect these in some subtle way).
And just as the questions philosophy of X deals with are philosophically motivated, so the questions it does not deal with are often governed by what matters in philosophy. Philosophy has given much time to the notion of dispositions (partly because of Carnap's concern for the logical structure of the physical sciences, partly because of Ryle's account of the mind) and to the verb "I can" and abilities (mainly because of their role in contemporary discussions of free will), but, so far as I am aware, it has not bothered to extend its concern to the notion of aptitude, which is, however, of considerable importance, and the source of some confusion, in psychology or educational measurement.5 For these reasons, it seems to me that general philosophy only stands a good chance of benefiting teachers if there is an intimate link with those teachers' exposure to different disciplines, so that the relevant issues can be discussed and problems within the disciplines can be taken further, while the self-regarding concerns of synoptic philosophy can be quietly left to one side.
Apart from such philosophical inputs to other subjects, what else might philosophy or philosophy of education offer a trainee teacher? Akinpelu's book would strongly suggest that it can help to deal with "educational theories". While this may be so, there are, as Akinpelu sometimes notices, some serious qualifications to be made. There has been some discussion about whether there is anything that deserves the name "educational theory", and while I am none too worried about what we call them, one of the central contentions in the debate is that all hitherto existing educational theories are logically very loose — some considerations, be they metaphysical, psychological, political, or whatever, seem to point towards this kind of curriculum, or approach to pedagogy, or ... rather than that, but it is not at all clear that they do lead here rather than there, or perhaps nowhere in particular. In Akinpelu's survey, radically opposed philosophies end up by endorsing very similar curricula, with perhaps some slight differences of emphasis. In addition, there is the simple logical point that Akinpelu mistakes, that false or unacceptable premises can lead validly to true or acceptable conclusions. So it may not make much practical difference if Dewey's pragmatism or Piaget's psychology turn out to be wrong — their pedagogical proposals have a life of their own. (Of course if we had a tight theory and validly derived from it false or unacceptable claims then we would have good reason to abandon or at least seriously modify the theory; but everyone is agreed that educational theories are not that tight.6) For these reasons, then, I think we should beware of overestimating what the philosophical examination of educational theories will be able to do for us.
Finally, what of the philosophy of education as it is practised by Akinpelu as by so many others? I have said already that most of the participants in this subject are not philosophers trying to solve their own problems. Secondly, it must be said that the discussions have proved particularly sterile: a trifling with straw "isms" ("child-centred education"; Akinpelu's "realism" etc.), an inconclusive and often mystifying ritual "analysis" of everyday concepts (equality of opportunity; knowledge; indoctrination, etc.), when what is needed is the kind of clearing away of obfuscatory brushwood that John Locke undertook to perform for the new sciences of his day. If people called a halt to the writing of introductions to the introductions of others and got down to some serious thinking in the subject, we might have something better to offer students than a partial exposure of some unfashionable errors which is at the same time a legitimation of many more pervasive and dangerous confusions. But until then, philosophers drawn into the preparation of teachers would be better employed passing on a modicum of logical analysis and some of the more obvious insights of general philosophy.
FOOTNOTES
1. Philosophers should not be found claiming that the labels "pragmatism", "instrumentalism", "empiricism" and "experimentalism" are really synonymous, as Akinpelu does on p. 142. Akinpelu's "realism" endorses common-sense, science, and objective values (p. 138) which has been impossible since Galileo and was awkward even for Aristotle. Talking of rights, Akinpelu says that if one has a right "someone else has a duty to provide what one is entitled to" which is immediately watered down to facilitating one's claims (p. 214); but even that is too much — if I have a claim right to do something, others have a duty to refrain from stopping me, but not necessarily any duty to positively facilitate my doing it. On the same page Akinpelu confuses the opportunity to take an examination with the chance or opportunity to pass it. If we must go in for "who was the best ... ?", I would have thought Demosthenes stood a better chance as an orator than as a lawyer (p. 36) but this is to descend to trivia. Speaking of trivia, there are a few obvious misprints, and more seriously, a garbled paragraph on the bottom of p. 192.
2 In "The Philosophy in Philosophy of Education", to appear in Teaching Philosophy, see also for pertinent and complementary remarks, John Gingell, 'Philosophy of Education and the B Ed', Educational Analysis, vol 4. no. 1, pp. 41-48, 1982.
3. I speak here with the chauvinism of English analytical philosophy, and I refer to the tradition it picks out for itself. If one moves to a broader conception of philosophy as made up of those works that call themselves philosophy, one may have to concede that overall there is no discernible progress, though some of the different traditions might claim progress within their own ranks. I wonder, however, what the point is of allowing bits and pieces of superseded or highly deviant "isms" to obscure the real progress that has been made in the analytic tradition, especially when one is, as Akinpelu is, in it oneself.
4. An egregious error occurs on p. 69: "If the underlying theory or assumption is false, then of course this deduction (scil. what is deduced) must also be false". But I can validly deduce the perfectly true claim that Jennifer is a vegetarian from the false theory that all males are vegetarians and that Jennifer is male. On p. 191 Akinpelu notes that we often say that an unpleasant experience has taught someone a lesson, but apparently this does not undermine the claim that teaching requires the intentional activity of a teacher, it simply confirms "that there can be learning without teaching in the sense we know it". No doubt this could be made coherent, but it is pretty slapdash, if not downright inconsistent, as it stands.
5. I am indebted here to conversations with Professor Robert Wood, arising out of his Inaugural Lecture to the University of the West Indies, Mona, on "Aptitude and Achievement". As an initial contribution to an inquiry that I believe has not happened, I would suggest that aptitudes are meant to be a kind of second order ability, abilities to acquire abilities; though many psychologists and others can be found using the terms "aptitude" and "ability" interchangeably. While this suggestion seems to account for some notable aspects of our thinking about aptitudes, it is merely a first step at an analysis of what careful speakers intend to convey, and leaves aside the more important question of what the facts might be which such speakers are trying to invoke. For these distinctions, see J.L. Mackie, Truth, Probability and Paradox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973) ch 1, or my paper cited in note 2 above. [These suggestions were taken further in a later paper, "Aptitude Analysed".]
6. The third possibility that perhaps deserves mention is that we might have a tight educational theory we knew to be true. In that case, if we validly deduce conclusions from it, we know they will be true too. We do not yet have such a theory, but we do have fragments of such a theory, and in particular we have some philosophical (e.g. epistemological) fragments. One thing philosophy can do is consider how tightly pedagogical conclusions can be drawn from relatively firm philosophical premises. An example of the connection here indicated is Freire's appeal to Popperian themes in support of his dialogical pedagogy in Education for Critical Consciousness (New York: Seabury Press, 1973), pp. 123-7.
URL http://www.uwichill.edu.bb/bnccde/epb/AKINPELU.html